Touro

While Nevadans have spent incredible sums to build and operate the Nevada School of Medicine, Nevadans have not spent enough to make the med school competitive.  While Nevada’s medical school has grown with the speed of a tortoise, Touro University, Nevada, a flourishing private, not for profit, university has established a College of Osteopathic Medicine.  This program has 2400 applicants for each class of 135 students, and is more than twice the size of UNSOM.

Touro has made every effort, and has been successful at meeting the medical needs of southern Nevada residents.  It has done so beginning with its first graduating class of 2008.  Touro has been designed and built to satisfy the medical needs of southern Nevada.  The University of Nevada School of Medicine has not only failed to recognize the needs of southern Nevadans, it has made a concerted effort to do so.  

Think about this over the weekend.  The University of Nevada School of Medicine costs Nevadans $1,018,000 to graduate a doctor who will remain in Nevada.  The medical school has never graduated more than 50 students although it has plans to graduate 62 in two more years.  A maximum of only 25 will remain in Nevada to practice medicine.  Of the students from out of state who have come to take advantage of a medical education that is subsidized by the State of Nevada in the sum of $509,000, not one of those out-of-state students has remained in Nevada to practice medicine.  If that’s not a bad investment, I don’t know what is.  On the other hand, of the 135 graduates of Touro University, Nevada, a greater number than 25 will likely stay in Nevada after graduation, pursue residencies in the State of Nevada, and, hopefully, choose to practice here.   (Although it is early to project the exact number of physicians from Touro who will practice here, Touro has already placed 68 doctors in residencies in Nevada in the first four years it graduated medical students.  Many of those doctors are likely to practice here).

One last insult to the injury.  The tuition at University Nevada School of Medicine is $18,000 per year or $72,000 for the four years.  The state subsidizes that tuition with a four-year investment of $509,000.  At Touro (the medical school in Las Vegas) students pay $45,000 per year in tuition, with no cost to the State.  Don’t believe that the Touro tuition prevents medical students from attending Touro.   Touro has 2400 applicants for its 135 slots.  

If the medical school believes its education is three times better than Touro, it should have no trouble attracting medical students with a tuition of $135,000 per year, or $540,000 for the four years which would let the state off the hook for subsidizing the University of Nevada School of Medicine.